The present subject matter relates generally to a variable tension rehabilitation glove that may be worn during normal activity and sports activity.
Rehabilitation from a hand injury involves the strengthening of muscles which may have atrophied during the healing process. Typically, rehabilitation includes strengthening of the hand muscles through resistance training. For example, resistant bands, stress balls, and other items may be used to strengthen the muscles in the fingers and palm, as well as the dorsal side of the hand.
Current rehabilitation methods include the use of various devices involving complicated systems of tension bands that may be cumbersome to arrange on a users hand. Even in examples in which the rehabilitation apparatus is in the form of a glove, the user may only use the glove during rehabilitation, due to the cumbersome nature of the design of the glove. For example, the rehabilitation glove may be bulky such that the user may not comfortably wear the glove to strengthen his or her hand during normal daily activity or during sports activities.
Further, many conventional systems only offer one degree of tension within the rehabilitation device. However, a user may need less tension during the beginning weeks of rehabilitation and more tension during the subsequent weeks of physical therapy. In order to provide a user with a gradient of tensions, a physician may need to switch among a couple of different rehabilitation devices to provide an increase in tension over time as the user strengthens his hand.
Not only do a majority of convention rehabilitation devices only provide one degree of tension during flexion or extension of the hand, but every finger has the same degree of tension as well. In other words, a user is not able to adjust the tension for individual fingers. For example, a user that has injured his middle finger may need less tension applied to the middle finger while the user needs more tension applied to the ring finger, which may have a lesser degree of injury.
In addition, current rehabilitation devices are designed to strengthen either the muscles used to close the hand into a first (flexion) or the muscles used to open a hand from a first (extension). In other words, the current systems only allow a user to strengthen the muscles used during flexion or extension of a user's hand, but not both. A user would need to use two separate devices to strengthen both the palmer muscles and dorsal muscles of a hand.
Accordingly, there is a need for a less bulky rehabilitation glove that strengthens both the muscles in the palmer and dorsal surfaces.